A House Without Windows: A Novel

Summary

A vivid, unforgettable story of an unlikely sisterhood—an emotionally powerful and haunting tale of friendship that illuminates the plight of women in a traditional culture—from the author of the bestselling The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and When the Moon Is Low.

For two decades, Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered with a hatchet in the courtyard of their home. Nearly catatonic with shock, Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal’s family is sure she did, and demands justice.

Barely escaping a vengeful mob, Zeba is arrested and jailed. As Zeba awaits trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have also led them to these bleak cells: thirty-year-old Nafisa, imprisoned to protect her from an honor killing; twenty-five-year-old Latifa, who ran away from home with her teenage sister but now stays in the prison because it is safe shelter; and nineteen-year-old Mezhgan, pregnant and unmarried, waiting for her lover’s family to ask for her hand in marriage. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young women wonder, or has she been imprisoned, as they have been, for breaking some social rule? For these women, the prison is both a haven and a punishment. Removed from the harsh and unforgiving world outside, they form a lively and indelible sisterhood.

Into this closed world comes Yusuf, Zeba’s Afghan-born, American-raised lawyer, whose commitment to human rights and desire to help his motherland have brought him back. With the fate of this seemingly ordinary housewife in his hands, Yusuf discovers that, like Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at all what he imagines.

A moving look at the lives of modern Afghan women, A House Without Windows is astonishing, frightening, and triumphant.

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A House Without Windows - Nadia Hashimi

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CHAPTER 1

IF ZEBA HAD BEEN A WOMAN LESS ORDINARY, KAMAL MIGHT HAVE seen it coming—a gnawing feeling or at least a few hairs standing on end. But she gave him no warning, no reason to believe that she would be anything more than she had been for the last two decades. She was a loving wife, a patient mother, a peaceful villager. She did nothing to draw attention to herself.

On that day, the day that changed an unchangeable village, Zeba’s afternoon was a bland repetition of the many afternoons before it. The clothes hung on the line outside their home. Stewed okra simmered in an aluminum pot. Rima, the puffy tops of her feet blackened from crawling around the house, slept a few feet away, a dark, wet circle where her innocent mouth met the bedsheet. Zeba watched her daughter’s back rise and fall and smiled to see the soft pout of her lips. She traced her finger through a mound of freshly ground cardamom. The scent lingered on her fingertip, sweet and soothing.

Zeba sighed and flicked the end of her white head scarf over her shoulder. She tried not to wonder where Kamal was because that inevitably led to wondering what he was doing, and Zeba was in no mood to entertain such thoughts today. She wanted today to stay an ordinary day.

Basir and the girls were on their way home from school. Basir, Zeba’s eldest son, was only sixteen years old but more hardened than other boys his age. Adolescence had gifted him with the unfortunate insight to see his parents for what they were. Home had not been a refuge. Home had been, for as long as Basir could remember, a broken place—broken dishes, broken ribs, broken spirits.

At the heart of the problem was Kamal, Zeba’s husband, a man who had disintegrated over the years. Now he survived only by believing that the man he was for minutes at a time could make up for the man he was the rest of the hours.

Zeba watched the embers flicker beneath the pot. Maybe Kamal would bring home a cut of meat today. They hadn’t had any in half a month. Last week, he’d brought a bag of onions, so fresh and sweet Zeba’s eyes had watered just looking at them. She’d cried tears of gratitude into everything she cooked for days.

Rima shifted languidly, her pale leg twisted back under the knit blanket and her arm pulled back to her side. She would be waking soon. Zeba brushed the cardamom grinds into a small empty jar. She took one deep breath before sealing the lid, letting its scent tingle her lungs.

Some days were difficult. Food was often scarce and the children sometimes ill. Zeba had already lost two little ones and knew just how easily God could take away. Kamal had moods she didn’t understand, but she’d learned to weather them, like an experienced pilot navigating through stormy skies. She numbed herself with housework. She focused on the good. The girls were attending school. Basir, her first and only son, was bright, and his help around the house was a relief to her aching back. Rima, the baby, had survived illnesses that had claimed others before her, and her pink cheeks buoyed Zeba’s spirit.

Rima. Incredibly, it was the youngest of the household who changed the course of history. Most children had to start walking before they could do such a thing.

Had Rima not shifted her leg at that moment, had the scent of cardamom not breathed life into Zeba’s weary lungs, had there been anyone else around to see or stop her, perhaps the life that transpired in their humble courtyard and within the solitude of their mud walls would have continued on for another year, another decade, or their entire lives. As it were, a soft breeze drifted through the open window and Zeba thought it best to bring the laundry in before Rima awakened, before Basir and the girls came home.

Out the back door, into the courtyard, and over to the clothesline where she stood for a few moments before hearing something she couldn’t deny.

It was the kind of sound no one wanted to hear. It was the kind of sound people would much rather walk away from.

Zeba’s chest tightened. A white heat flushed her face and made her jaw clench tightly on a day that could have been so wonderfully ordinary. Zeba debated for a moment before deciding she—a wife, a woman, a mother—had to see.

BASIR AND HIS SISTERS ENTERED THROUGH THE GATE IN THE clay wall that separated their home and courtyard from the street and neighboring houses. At the sound of Rima’s wailing, the cry of a child with outstretched arms, Basir’s stomach lurched. The girls hurried into the house and, in a flash, Shabnam had Rima balanced on her narrow hip, the baby’s face runny and red. Kareema looked at her sisters wide-eyed, the smell of burnt okra thick and ominous in the air. There was no sign of Madar-jan. Something was wrong.

Basir said nothing to the girls. He scanned the two bedrooms and the kitchen quickly. He felt his hands tremble as he reached the back door. Pantaloons, head scarves, and shirts flapped on the clothesline. A soft whimper pulled Basir’s attention to the far corner of their courtyard, where the outhouse backed against the neighbor’s outer wall.

Basir took another step. And another. How much he yearned to go back to this morning, when everything was ordinary and normal. How much he yearned to go back into the house and find his mother stirring green beans in a heavy pot and worrying that her children hadn’t enough to eat.

But nothing would be ordinary again. Basir knew this as he turned the corner and the life he knew melted into a bloody, brutal mess. Zeba, his mother, looked up at him, her face drained and empty. She sat with her back against the wall, the air toxic. Her hands were dark and bloody, her shoulders shaking.

"Madar-jan," Basir started. A crumpled shape lay a few feet away by the outhouse.

"Bachem," Zeba’s voice faltered. Her staccato breaths quickened. Her head sank between her knees as she began to sob.

Go back into the house, my son . . . go back into the house . . . your sisters, your sisters . . . go back into the house . . .

Basir felt his chest tighten. Like his father, he hadn’t seen this coming.

CHAPTER 2

YUSUF, AS A YOUNG BOY, NEVER DREAMED HE WOULD ONE DAY BE a lawyer, much less a lawyer in America. He was like any other child and gave little thought to the many days beyond tomorrow.

He remembered well afternoons spent rustling through the low-hanging boughs of the pomegranate tree in his grandfather’s orchard. Plump red balls hung like ornaments on outstretched arms. Three proud trees grew enough fruit to keep Boba-jan’s children and grandchildren with red-stained fingers through the fall. Yusuf would pluck the heaviest and roundest pomegranate he could reach and slice through its leathery peel with a knife he’d snuck from his grandmother’s kitchen. He would crack the globe in half, careful to catch any loose ruby-colored gems. A careful fingertip wiggled each seed free from its white membrane. He worked diligently, painstakingly. Sometimes he ate the pearls one by one, feeling the tart burst on his tongue. Other times, he popped a handful in his mouth and teased the juice out before mashing the fibrous pits between his teeth.

Yusuf would throw the peels over the adobe wall that separated his grandfather’s yard from the street—not because he shouldn’t be eating pomegranates but because he didn’t want his siblings or cousins to know how many he’d devoured.

The youngest of four children, Yusuf adored his brother, who was six years older, handsome, and quite self-assured. He loved his two sisters, too, sitting by them while they crumbled stale bread between their palms and tossed it to the grateful pigeons and sparrows outside their home. Yusuf was a boy who loved stories, particularly ones that frightened and surprised. When he slept, he imagined himself a hero, chasing djinns into the jungle or finding treasures at the bottom of a well. Sometimes he was brave in his dreams, rescuing his family from the grips of evil villains. But more often than he cared to admit, Yusuf would wake to a mattress wet with a child’s fear.

When Yusuf was eleven, his father decided it was time to leave Afghanistan. The rockets were nearing their town, a village that had escaped the past decade relatively unscathed. Yusuf’s mother, who had worked as a teacher for just one year before the schools were closed, was glad to leave. She carried a few token items into their new life: a handful of photographs, a sweater her mother had knit, and an intricate peacock-blue shawl her husband had brought for her from his travels in India when they were first married. Her copper urns, their crimson hand-knotted carpets, and her silver wedding tray were all left behind, along with most of her clothing. Yusuf’s father, a trained pilot, hadn’t flown in years because the airlines had been grounded. He still made certain to pack his diplomas and certificates as well as the children’s. He was a practical man and did not lament leaving the rest behind.

The journey from Afghanistan to Pakistan was treacherous. The family crossed mountains, sometimes in the darkness, and paid suspicious-looking men large sums of money to help them. All four siblings, close in age, huddled with their parents in the darkness, in the back of a truck, as they climbed over rocks. They trembled when gunshots echoed through the valleys. Yusuf’s mother, stumbling beneath her burqa, urged them to press on and insisted the guns were too far away to reach them. Yusuf might have believed her had her voice trembled a bit less.

In Pakistan, Yusuf’s family settled in a refugee camp. Though they were far from wealthy in Afghanistan, the camp was a harsh adjustment for them. Pakistani police officers shouted and waved off any questions. They stood in lines for food, for housing, for documents that never seemed to materialize. They lived in an open field, a dust bowl full of tents and listless souls. They slept side by side, trying to ignore the stench of poverty, loss, and destitution. The devil finds work for idle hands, Yusuf’s mother would warn her children. They kept to themselves and spoke to no one in the camps of anything more than the interminable waiting and the abominable heat. This refugee camp was temporary, Yusuf’s parents promised, and soon enough they would join their relatives in America.

Weeks passed and no news came. Yusuf’s father searched for work, but the airline office scoffed at his appeals. He couldn’t find work as a mechanic or even as an assistant to one. Disheartened and with dwindling funds, he took a job as a brick maker.

Dignity is not in what work you do, he insisted to his wife and children who were unaccustomed to seeing him covered in mud and dust. It’s in how you do that work.

But his shoulders hung low as he washed the clay from his hands. Yusuf’s mother bit her lip and rested her hand on his arm in the thin privacy of their tent. Dignity was hard to find in the camp. They insulated themselves as much as possible and kept away from what went on: cockfights, opium clouds, the stench of unbathed masses, and the moans of mourning for a child who’d succumbed to disease.

Yusuf’s older brother worked alongside his father. His two sisters stayed with their mother, and Yusuf was sent to the local school, twenty boys sitting under a log shelter, open on three sides. There was a weathered chalkboard and a teacher who distributed small, stapled notebooks with onionskin paper. Yusuf’s relatives in America swore they were doing all they could to bring them to the United States—they had filled out forms, submitted bank statements, and even hired lawyers they could barely afford. The local consulate officials told Yusuf’s father his application was still being considered.

"Padar-jan, I can go work with you and Fazil. I’m not a child anymore. I can earn money, too." They sat in their tent at dusk, drinking bowls of thin soup his mother had cooked over an open fire.

Yusuf’s father had stared at the ground, as if he expected it to drop from under him.

"But Madar-jan, I want to help. That school is crowded and the kids are . . ."

Yusuf. The unmistakable edge in her voice silenced him. Yusuf’s father slept that night without saying another word.

Weeks stretched into months. They grew despondent as they watched the camp swell with new families. When they finally received the letter saying they had been granted visas to the United States, Yusuf’s mother pressed her face into her husband’s chest to muffle her sobs. Kaka Rahim’s persistence had paid off. They were among the fortunate few who would turn their backs on this camp; but years into their lives in America, the mark was still on them, heaviest on Yusuf’s father who never managed to walk as tall as he had when he was an out-of-work pilot in their village.

Yusuf’s family settled in New York, in a Queens neighborhood that was home to the Afghan diaspora. They took it all in: the elevator buildings, the swarms of people walking to work, the reliable tap water, the grocery stores so bountiful that their fruits and vegetables practically spilled onto the sidewalks. The reunion with family was thick with embraces, tears, and meat-laden meals. They stayed with an uncle and his family in their three-bedroom apartment until they were able to secure assistance and enough work to rent an apartment of their own. Yusuf and his sisters were enrolled in school; his father and Fazil started working at Kaka Rahim’s pizza shop.

YUSUF’S ELDEST SISTER, SITARA, FELL IN LOVE JUST AFTER FINISHING high school. She had met an Afghan boy who lived in the same apartment building. Flirtatious looks in the dank elevator turned into stolen moments in the humidity of the basement laundry room. Yusuf’s parents warned their daughter to stay away from the boy, who worked part-time as a bank teller and whose parents were of a different ethnicity. Doors were slammed, phone calls were intercepted, and seething looks were exchanged. Predictably, the young lovers grew all the more desperate for each other and embraced on public buses, caring less and less that their parents would learn of their improprieties.

To stave off rumors, the families agreed to have the two married, and after a modest ceremony, Sitara moved in with him and his family to start her new life just two floors above her parents and siblings in the apartment the boy’s family had occupied for years. Yusuf’s second sister, Sadaf, opted to stay in school and pursue accounting at a city community college. His brother, removed from books for too long, sharpened his English by repeating lines of dialogue from television sitcoms. He rose quickly through the restaurant ranks and became a bartender. Yusuf’s mother enrolled in ESL classes at the local library and began working as a clerk in a department store. Yusuf’s father, grateful to Kaka Rahim for getting them on their feet, decided it would be safest not to mix work and family and driving a taxi, resigning himself to a flightless future. Almost overnight, Yusuf became an adolescent who had mastered the nuances of the English language and the crowded subways. He excelled in school and impressed teachers who urged him to apply for scholarships and pursue college.

He did well by day but woke in cold sweats at night at least once a week. He simply couldn’t go seven nights without fumbling in the dark to change his panic-soaked shirts and pillowcase without waking his siblings.

The family lived modestly but comfortably. They had one, then two televisions. Their closets filled with new clothes. They replaced their lost possessions with new ones. Yusuf’s mother burst into tearful laughter when his father came home with a silver tray, almost identical to the wedding tray they’d left behind. They watched television together, one person always with a ready finger on the remote should the actors and actresses fall into a love scene. Yusuf’s father followed Afghanistan in the newspapers and on the news. They all braced themselves after September eleventh and were shocked that strangers on the street would shout angrily at them in the disaster’s aftermath. Yusuf’s father cheered the U.S. decision to invade Afghanistan though he had no intention or hope of returning there.

Only fools run into burning buildings, he would joke.

When Yusuf was a freshman at NYU, news about Afghanistan was everywhere. It was tedious. Afghanistan was suicide attacks, battered women, and corruption. In his second year, Yusuf had enrolled in a course on human rights on a whim, thinking it would be an easy way to bring up his grade point average. By the second lecture, a fire was lit. In a flood of memories, Yusuf was back in Afghanistan. Death tolls. Small boys working as blacksmiths. A promising journalist murdered along with his wife and children. Dehumanizing refugee camps. A young girl sold to pay off a poppy crop debt. Untouchable warlords.

How could he turn his back on all that?

Others did not. Others were brave. Others championed the cause of the voiceless.

Yusuf had lived and breathed the American belief that one person could make a difference. Flyers in the student union and the optimistic rhetoric of professors swelled in him. He attended his first protest and liked the way it felt to chant with the crowd. He raised his voice. He developed a taste for the fight, the fury it brought out of him. Feeling angry was better than feeling afraid.

Two semesters passed, and Yusuf realized it had been weeks since he last woke in a cold sweat.

Yusuf chose law because it was the difference between right and wrong—because the law was the only way to protect the weak and punish the aggressors. He studied for weeks and burned through books of practice LSAT exams until he sat for the test and scored surprisingly well. He filled out a dozen applications but kept his fingers crossed that he would get accepted into a program in New York. With nervous excitement, Yusuf tore open a thick packet from Columbia. It was good news, but his parents shook their heads in disappointment.

Are you sure you don’t want to be a doctor? Doctors save lives every day, they reminded him.

I don’t want to save one life at a time, Yusuf declared. There are better ways.

His parents shrugged their shoulders and hoped for the best. At least he would be a professional, more accomplished than his siblings who had little interest in graduate school. They would have done more to stop him had they known what he would go on to do.

Yusuf took courses on human rights law and immigration law. He volunteered as an interpreter and sharpened his native Dari. He had professors make phone calls on his behalf to land internships with human rights organizations. He was thankful his family had settled in New York where opportunities abounded. He kept his nose buried in books.

You’ll be blind before you’re thirty, his mother had lamented. She was proud of her son but worried about him, too. Some weeks it seemed he barely slept at all.

Yusuf graduated from law school and was hired by the advocacy organization where he’d interned for two years. They’d been impressed by his drive and created a position for him. He wasn’t making as much as his classmates who had gone the corporate route, but it was more than he or anyone in his family had ever made and he was thrilled to have purpose. He worked hard and turned no project away.

Yusuf did carve out time to socialize, though he felt compelled to tell himself he was networking so he would not feel as though he was wasting time.

IT STARTED WITH HAPPY HOUR, A CHEERFUL EXCUSE TO DRINK upon exiting an air-conditioned office building. Over time, Yusuf acquired a taste for dark lagers. A cold beer in his hands made him feel like he was bonding with his colleagues. He kept this part of his life private from his parents and siblings. Though they’d shared tight living spaces all their lives, he still felt compelled to keep his sins to himself. It was not a matter of deceit, as he saw it, but a show of respect for his parents’ ideals.

Happy hour was where Yusuf had started dating. It had taken him that many years to feel like the girls around him wouldn’t see him as foreign or inferior. When an Asian girl named Lin leaned across a bar table and rested her hand on his forearm flirtatiously, Yusuf felt his confidence soar. He went out with a few girls but never let anything go further than five or six dates. If he sensed they were interested in more, he would slip away, letting a few phone calls go unanswered or confessing his reluctance to commit to any one person.

It was immature, he realized, but he had decided, after listening to his parents rant about his older brother’s diverse parade of girlfriends, that he would find someone his parents would adore. He wanted someone who could speak Dari with them, who would raise bilingual children with him, who would understand both American and Afghan culture. It was the practical and respectable thing to do.

Then he’d met Elena—beautiful and irresistible Elena who had immigrated to the United States with her family at a very young age from Peru. She had chocolate brown hair and her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, which she did often. She was a friend of a colleague and stopped when she spotted them drinking beers at a sidewalk café. She was making her way home from her job at an accounting firm, wearing a white peplum top and smartly creased, navy blue pencil pants.

She was sweet and smart and, importantly, did not flinch when Yusuf told her his family had come from Afghanistan. On their first date, they went to see a free Peruvian music concert in Central Park. On their second date, they ate artisanal ice cream in the East Village. Yusuf couldn’t resist slipping his arms around Elena’s waist and pulling her close when he was with her. She was five inches shorter than him, and when they embraced, Yusuf breathed in the sweet, tropical scent of her shampoo. She clung to him just enough that he felt adored and not so much that he felt trapped. She could talk about the implications of a trade agreement and the latest One Direction song in the same breath. Yusuf’s friends raised their eyebrows and beer mugs in approval. Elena was a catch.

When Yusuf met her, he’d already made plans to move to Washington, D.C., to work with a nonprofit that focused on crimes against humanity. He convinced himself they both understood things would come to an end once he left. Elena didn’t fit into his plans. And yet, Yusuf found immense happiness in a hundred quiet things: the way her nose crinkled when she laughed, the way she slipped a playful finger into his collar, the urge he felt to call or text her a moment after they’d kissed good night.

The fact that they had so little in common seemed to draw them to each other. Language, religion, professional fields—they studied each other with almost academic interest.

Elena listened to Yusuf talk about the headlines that pulled his attention: the unearthing of thousands of Muslim corpses, men and boys who’d been executed in the Bosnian genocide, the flogging of a dissident journalist in Saudi Arabia, the disappearance of a Malaysian passenger plane. Elbows propped on the table and eyes focused, she filled in with details she’d read in online news reports. She made Yusuf question his plan. Maybe he shouldn’t limit himself to women from his own background. Maybe a common culture and language wasn’t everything.

Maybe Elena was everything.

They were on their way to the subway station after a dinner with friends when Elena and Yusuf paused at a crosswalk. He turned to her and adjusted the paisley scarf knotted around her neck. It was fall and the evenings were brisk.

My niece’s baptism is this weekend. You’ll come with me, right?

The red hand turned into a white stick figure, prompting them to move forward. Yusuf didn’t immediately obey. Elena had to tug at his elbow.

Maybe, he had said. Let me see how much I get done with work this week.

They’d settled into two empty seats on the 7 train, New York’s version of the Silk Road. Elena would get off soon after they entered Queens, before the neighborhoods turned distinctly Asian. Yusuf had another nine stops to go before he got to Flushing.

You know, I already miss you, baby, Elena had said to him as the torque of the subway car nudged them closer together. I’m going to want to visit you every weekend in D.C.

Yusuf had kissed her squarely on the lips, long enough that Elena interpreted it to mean he would miss her equally. But something in Yusuf was rattled by the expectation that he would go to something as alien as a baptism, and, as their lips parted, Yusuf withdrew. When the conductor announced her stop, Elena smiled at him and walked off the train. He was already sorry for what he would have to do, but it could be no other way. Yusuf no longer saw all that Elena was—he only saw what she was not.

A REMORSEFUL YUSUF TRAVELED TO WASHINGTON, D.C., AND spent a year with a team of lawyers putting together a case against militia officers accused of genocide in Africa. He did his best not to think about Elena. When he missed her, as he often did, he busied himself with research or called his mother, which reminded him how Elena would not fit in with his family. Conversations with his mother were, by this point, fairly predictable. She would fill him in on the latest happenings with his siblings and gossip from his cousins. Inevitably, her attention would circle back to Yusuf.

You’ve finished school, you have a job. It’s time to get married. Are you waiting for all the good girls to be taken by boys that don’t even have a quarter of your looks or smarts?

Yusuf ducked out of the conversations. He missed having someone at his side, but he could not imagine taking a wife now. He could not imagine someone waiting for him to come home each night, asking him why he worked so late. He could not be bothered with a second set of parents and cousins and uncles. He had no desire to become a father. He made false promises to his parents that he would be better prepared for commitment next year.

But Yusuf had other plans. He would sacrifice, he believed, so that he could follow the path he was meant to follow. And he’d had no choice but to walk away from Elena.

Turning away from Elena would have been harder had he not felt a strange twinge in his chest.

It came from the land of clay and mountains. It was as if a siren had appeared in his dreams, begging him to save her from herself. He heard her name on the talk radio stations; he saw her face on magazine covers. The Internet screamed her sorrows, telling the story of the unjust blood shed on her land, the imprisoned and the persecuted. Each injustice called to him as if he were the only hope.

Afghanistan.

Yusuf picked up the phone. He sent painstakingly constructed e-mails. If he did not answer her call, who would? His resolve hardened.

On a bustling sidewalk, Yusuf realized he could not remember the last time he’d woken in a cold sweat. He smiled to himself, growing stronger just by thinking about her. Hurt and beautiful, she was home.

CHAPTER 3

HER HUSBAND’S BEEN MURDERED! THIS IS NO TIME TO ASK RIDICULOUS questions! Where’s your honor? This man needs to be washed and prepared for burial. His parents, his family—has anyone spoken to them?

Zeba clenched her hands together. If only they would stop shaking, maybe then she could understand what had happened. Maybe then she could explain. Her head was in a vise. There was too much talking. Kamal’s body was still by the outhouse. Certainly the flies must have noticed by now.

This man was killed in his own home! We need to know what happened here!

Basir and the girls were in the second bedroom. Kareema and Shabnam, eight and nine years old, were trying to be brave. They’d run to their mother when she finally came into the house, but the look in her eyes and the way her knotted hands trembled had unnerved them. They retreated, turning back to Basir who had tasked them with looking after Rima.

Please, everyone, dear neighbors and friends, please understand that my mother, my family has suffered today. I have to get word to my uncles, the rest of the family.

But the police, they have to be called.

They’ve been sent for already.

Who called?

It doesn’t matter. The chief will be here shortly and he can decide what will be done.

The screaming had cracked the neighborhood doors open, one by one. Scandal was an irresistible temptress. It was unclear who had been shrieking, and now neither Basir nor Zeba was sharing any information. Basir stood in the front courtyard biting his cheek. He fought back tears and kept his gaze to the ground. The men and women had gathered, word spreading through the mud-walled neighborhood like a drop of ink in water. Basir stole glances at the faces he’d known all his life. Women pinched their head scarves primly under their chins and clucked their tongues softly. The men shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders.

But why isn’t she talking? What happened here, Khanum? Did you kill your husband?

Of course she did! There’s a hatchet in the back of his neck! Do you think he killed himself?

Zeba and Basir both winced at the mention of the hatchet. Basir crouched down next to his mother who sat with her side against the clay wall of their home.

His voice cracked in a nervous whisper.

Madar, I don’t know what to . . . can you tell them what happened? Did someone come in here?

Zeba’s eyes pleaded with her son. She said nothing.

Basir pressed his palms against his closed eyes, the pressure making the world go black for only a split second. He still saw blood.

What are we to do now?

Basir cried silently. Zeba pulled her head scarf across her face. Eyes were watching her, sentencing her. Her three daughters cowered in the room behind this wall. Zeba inhaled sharply and forced a deep breath.

"Basir, bachem, please go inside and look after your sisters. They must be so frightened."

Eyes narrowed. Ears cocked to the side—the grieving widow was speaking. They waited for a confession. Basir didn’t move. He stayed at his mother’s side, angrily wiping tears away with the back of his hand.

What else will she say? he wondered.

Dear God, what have you brought upon us? What did we do to deserve such a fate? What are we to do? Zeba moaned, loud enough to elicit sympathetic head shaking. How could this have happened here . . . in our own home?

The women looked at the men around them. They looked at one another. Zeba was as close to death as any woman could be. And then they began to echo her laments.

This poor woman—without a husband—may Allah protect her and her dear children!

THE CHIEF OF POLICE, AGHA HAKIMI, WAS IN HIS EARLY FORTIES. He was the grandson of a warlord who’d been conquered by another warlord with more men, more guns, and more money. Hakimi was the living legacy of impotence and failure. The village treated him as such.

When Hakimi entered the courtyard, he was immediately led to the back of the house. At the sight of Kamal’s body, he shook his head and narrowed his eyes, hoping to look more pensive than disgusted. The flesh of Kamal’s neck had been torn apart. Chunks of bone, puddles of blood, and bits of brain—a spray of pink, red, and white scattered just behind the dead man.

The police chief was updated in a series of interrupted accounts, his eyes darting from the morbid debris to the widow slumped against the wall and then to the many faces staring at him expectantly.

Zeba was moaning softly, mournfully.

Hakimi stared hard at the woman before him. Her eyes were glazed, her hands still trembled. When he spoke to her, she looked at him blankly, as if he spoke a foreign tongue. Exasperated, Hakimi turned to the crowd.

No one knows what happened back there? God have mercy. What happened to Kamal? You were his neighbors? Did no one hear anything?

Then Hakimi raised a hand for silence. He turned to Rafiqi. Agha Rafiqi had the grayest beard present, and his home abutted Zeba’s on one side.

Agha Rafiqi, you share a wall with this family. You have known them for years. What did you hear?

Over the years, Agha Rafiqi had heard plenty—not the same sound that had drawn Zeba into the yard, but other sounds that were easier to name. He looked at the woman slumped on the ground, trembling like a bird caught in a net.

"I . . . I have known them for years, indeed. Kamal-jan, may Allah forgive his sins, gave me no trouble. He looked after his family, he was . . . oh, what can I say? His widow now sits here. She has four children to look after. My wife knows her well. I cannot believe she would commit such a heinous crime."

There were groans and shouts and fists pumping in the air.

Enough! Hakimi cried, feeling a trickle of sweat trace his spine. He felt his breath catch to think how the gathering mob would react to any plan he might propose. They hated him, he knew. Why oh why had he agreed to take on this job?

I want to hear what Agha Rafiqi has to say. He turned again to Agha Rafiqi, who looked more than a little uncomfortable with the power vested in him.

Agha Rafiqi cleared his throat and started cautiously.

I am no judge but . . . I . . . I would say, as a matter of decency, that she should be allowed to stay here and tend to her children until these matters can be sorted out.

The women buzzed in agreement.

Hakimi nodded authoritatively. People respected Rafiqi and wouldn’t question their neighborhood elder. The accusing shouts fell to a grumble. Hakimi cleared his throat, fidgeted with his police belt, and took a step away from Zeba.

Very well, then I suppose there’s the issue of the body . . .

We will wrap his body and move it closer to the back door of the house. His family can tend to his washing there, one of the men called out.

Basir felt his stomach settle a bit. Hakimi looked all around, peered into every corner of their home, and examined their courtyard one square foot at a time. He had two officers with him, young boys barely older than Basir, bushy haired and smooth faced.

Someone pulled a bedsheet off the clothesline. Hakimi, hands on his hips, thanked them for helping with a nod. He avoided Zeba’s eyes.

Basir could see the neighbors were more than a little interested in the gory scene. The women filed out in respect but found reason to linger in the street, necks craning as they hoped for a glimpse. Was it really as bad as people had said?

It all might have ended there had Fareed not stormed in, breathless and enraged. Fareed, Kamal’s young cousin. A man who could curse and exchange pleasantries in the same breath. Fareed’s tunic hung from his body, and his face was flushed. Agha Hakimi was startled and nearly dropped his pocket pad.

What happened here? Where’s my cousin?

Fareed’s eyes fell upon the four men carrying the rolled bedsheet. The pale floral pattern was darkened with splotchy red stains.

So it’s true? Is that him? Let me see my cousin! What happened to him?

He pushed his way closer, but three men held him back, muttering words of condolence.

Somebody tell me what happened here! Fareed roared.

All faces turned to Hakimi. The police chief straightened his shoulders and summarized what he’d learned thus far.

Your cousin was found in the courtyard. We are not sure who killed him at this moment. No one heard anything until Khanum Zeba came out screaming. We believe she’d found her husband’s body. So while we investigate this further, we’ll leave Zeba to look after the children for tonight.

Fareed looked at his cousin’s wife, whose shaking had worsened since he entered the gate. She was rocking with eyes half closed. Fareed turned to stare at the circle of onlookers, some shifting under his grief with a guilt they could not explain. His nostrils flared and his brow knotted with fury.

Have you lost your minds—all of you? The men looked at one another.

Fareed did not wait for an answer. In that second, he pounced on Zeba, and before anyone could stop him, his hands closed around her neck.

CHAPTER 4

ZEBA, LIKE A TODDLER WITH A FEVER, YEARNED FOR HER MOTHER in those bleak hours. But she did not cry out for her. After the venomous words they’d exchanged, Zeba was not yet desperate enough to reach out to Gulnaz. She would wait.

It was a shame, really. Once upon a time, Zeba and her mother, Gulnaz, had been as close as a flower to its stem. Zeba had been a radiant child, a manifestation of the name her father had bestowed upon her. She would slip from her father’s lap to her mother’s side, giggling as her parents took turns tickling her tummy, kissing the top of her head, or tossing her in the air.

Zeba’s brother, Rafi, was five years older and more serious by nature. He was a simple and docile son who gave his parents neither reason to boast nor to complain.